Special Projects

The Miró Quartet is a stalwart supporter of living composers, having commissioned on average at least one new work every year, though often more. New works for the Miró have come from such artists as Gunther Schuller, Ezra Laderman, Chan Ka Nin, Brent Michael Davids, Kevin Puts, Dominic Maican, David Schober, as well as student composers at UT. The Miró Quartet has even partnered with Mr. Davids in the Native American Composers Project, performing quartets written by High School students from various American Indian Tribes all around the Grand Canyon in Arizona.

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Collaboration with Colin Currie!

Join us beginning in 2010 when the Miro Quartet collaborates with International Percussion Superstar COLIN CURRIE, offering an eclectic and virtuosic program showcasing the astonishing virtuosity of Currie and the Miros together in a creative assortment of solos, duos, quartets and quintets. Featured are works by John Zorn, David Maric, Steve Reich, Louis Andriessen, Steve Martland, and Alexander Goehr’s “Since Brass, nor Stone”. NB: there will be two two versions of this program offered: one all contemporary selections (featuring the most recent string quartet by John Zorn: Necronomicon), the other with alternative string quartet selections by Schubert and Samuel Barber. Don’t miss this electrifying combo live onstage!  For more information on Colin Currie, please visit www.colincurrie.net

Check out this amazing video of Colin Currie!

UT Austin Young Professional String Quartet Program

In the Fall of 2009 the Miro Quartet established a new program for training young professional quartets at The University of Texas at Austin–and this year we are training our first young group, the Aeolus Quartet. Every two years one promising young group will be chosen through international auditions to receive full scholarship, generous stipend and a two year residency as assistants to the Miro Quartet at UT. One of the only programs to offer a Masters or Artists Diploma in Chamber Music in the US, the YPSQP will be accepting applications for our next group in Spring 2011.  For more information, visit the Miró Quartet’s Teaching page.

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Poetry and Music: Multimedia Presentations

We explore the Music of Speech and the Meaning of Sound when the Miró Quartet teams up with poet Matthea Harvey for a daring yet lyrical mingling of original poetry and music from past and present. This program features a unique blending of words and music when the String Quartet #5 by Phillip Glass is heard simultaneously together with original poem “The Glass Factory” by Harvey. Also featured will be the mystical “The Seven Last Words of Christ” by Joseph Haydn, with special readings heard as the drama of the Passion Strory unfolds through the sounds of the String Quartet. Matthea Harvey has taught poetry at the University of Houston, Pratt, the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop and Warren Wilson’s low-residency MFA program, along with summer courses for the Tin House Writers’ Conference and the Juniper Institute. A contributing editor to jubilat, BOMB and Meatpaper, she currently teaches poetry at Sarah Lawrence and lives in Brooklyn. To listen to the Miró Quartet performing the Phillip Glass String Quartet #5 with Matthea Harvey live at the White Pine Festival, check out this page at the Minnesota Public Radio website!

The Miró Quartet performs George Crumb’s Black Angels in Japan (2010).